Soloing Viscidus as a lock

Hey folks, been trying to get all the new pets today (Already got Gluth's Bone ) And I've managed to solo everything except Viscidus so far.
Freezing him hasn't been a problem, but as soon as I get him frozen, the best I've managed to do was get the second message before he unfroze.
I'm doing it as demo, wearing as much haste gear as possible, using the fastest weapon I could find and popping service when he freezes. Still no luck.
Just wondering if anyone had some helpful insight onto something I'm missing/doing wrong. Would really appreciate any help.
Cheers in advance guys.

Wouldn't it be better to not sacrifice and have a melee pet hitting him? I'm not terribly familiar with warlocks, but pre-5.1 when it required a lot more hits to shatter him (I assume this was how they nerfed him for 5.1), the hunter strategy (my main) was to bring out every pet/extra melee attack you can get. Double dire beasts, double snake trap, stampede, etc.

There's also the barov peasant caller if you have it, and I believe the Horseman's blade would work similiarly (though they probably share a CD).

Completely retarded question but I was under the belief Viscidus still can only be damaged by frost damage (at times? This has been ages)? I know the few times I've faced him is actually why I hate, loathe and despise AQ with such unprecedented ferocity and I can only be thankful I did not have the pc to play wow vanilla back then. Imagine progressing it.. ....ANYWAY. I digress. Frost damage? Could I, theoretically, if I felt my house was in need of being thoroughly remodeled, solo it without frost damage?

..Edit: Or are you just actually melee'ing him? Good grief. I tip my hat to you good sirs and ladies. May patience be with you!

Completely retarded question but I was under the belief Viscidus still can only be damaged by frost damage (at times? This has been ages)? I know the few times I've faced him is actually why I hate, loathe and despise AQ with such unprecedented ferocity and I can only be thankful I did not have the pc to play wow vanilla back then. Imagine progressing it.. ....ANYWAY. I digress. Frost damage? Could I, theoretically, if I felt my house was in need of being thoroughly remodeled, solo it without frost damage?

..Edit: Or are you just actually melee'ing him? Good grief. I tip my hat to you good sirs and ladies. May patience be with you!

The frost attacks are only a part of the fight. After you hit Visc with 200 frost damage attacks, he freezes and you need to shatter him. Shattering takes a certain amount of melee attacks, but you only have a fairly short time to do it in while Visc is frozen. Visc can only be killed by shattering him.

The frost damage isn't too hard to do solo, since it's only a matter of time and a frost damage wand or Frost Oil can do the job, but getting in enough melee attacks while frozen is nearly impossible except for a few select classes that can spawn large amounts of adds to help out.

Wouldn't it be better to run double Felguard? That is unless the felstorm hits don't count. Just so you can prep it takes 20 frost hits to freeze him now. I did it today on my DK. I hit him with 19 icy touches, summoned army and my ghoul, then froze him. Worked just fine.

Excuse me my ignorance, since I've never tried to solo him but... don't you need to deal frost damage in order to freeze him and shatter him, afaik? As a warlock you can only do it by weapon enchants... or have they changed the boss mechanic somehow?

"Unsoloable" or really hard to solo bosses have been fixed due to them having pets now.
Any kind of damage freezes Visci now and the amount of hits required to shatter him has been reduced, but it's still really hard to shatter him all by yourself.

No, I can be 110% sure that "any" kind of damage does NOT freeze Viscidus. What most people are seeing is that they are using the Elemental Force weapon enchant which deals Elemental Damage on proc, which counts as frost.

As a Ret Paladin with Windsong on my weapon, I spent 3 solid minutes bashing on him, never once turned any bit of blue. Moment I went and got a weapon and put Elemental Force on it, it started working.

I brought the Terracotta Warrior, the Quilen Statue (from Archy), Guardian of Ancient Kings, and even switched to a 1H weapon (A bit faster) once I froze him, still not enough to get all the melee hits on him. Ended up having my sister come in on her Rogue alt to help me get the kill off.

I'm thinking that most all caster-classes won't be soloing Viscidus, until Blizzard admits that the like 50 some-odd melee hits to Shatter him is not realistic for one non-DW class to do, even summoning a small group of guardians to help with the fight. My sister's Shaman on the other hand is Enhance... Double Windfury + Spirit Wolves + Earth Elem = Quickly shattered.

Do remember though: Making it more solo-friendly does NOT mean making it easy. Many classes will still attest to that on Razorgore right now. Did it on my Paladin, barely after like 10+ wipes. My Warlock? Went Demo + Grim of Sac + Dark Apoth, and lol'd through it. Night-and-Day comparisson.

---------- Post added 2012-11-29 at 10:30 AM ----------

Originally Posted by LeyrHao

Excuse me my ignorance, since I've never tried to solo him but... don't you need to deal frost damage in order to freeze him and shatter him, afaik? As a warlock you can only do it by weapon enchants... or have they changed the boss mechanic somehow?

You do. People just don't realize that the cheap enchant for MoP, Elemental Force, counts as Frost damage.

Games are not necessarily "easier" today. You are just a better player.
It takes more now to impress many gamers than it did 2-5 years ago, because so much has already been seen and done.
Many players expect to be wow'd with every release of a beloved franchise.
These are generally NOT the fault of the developers, but the fault of many players over-hyping and/or setting expectations too high.

you need A LOT of this. I had to bring in my dk and pop army just to get enough hits in. so that's my warrior meleeing with a 1.6speed, dk dual wield 1.9, 2.3 spamming attacks + army and a raised ghoul. stood no chance without army. so even if they did nerf it, it's really not that solo friendly still even. haste stacking is a good idea tho, might work :>

Wouldn't it be better to run double Felguard? That is unless the felstorm hits don't count. Just so you can prep it takes 20 frost hits to freeze him now. I did it today on my DK. I hit him with 19 icy touches, summoned army and my ghoul, then froze him. Worked just fine.

Army of the Dead trivializes the encounter mechanics. You can summon what is it... 8-10 ghouls to beat on him. Even in every one lands only 5 attacks in those 15 seconds, that right there is nearly enough to shatter him on it's own, not counting yourself, or your normal ghoul.

Games are not necessarily "easier" today. You are just a better player.
It takes more now to impress many gamers than it did 2-5 years ago, because so much has already been seen and done.
Many players expect to be wow'd with every release of a beloved franchise.
These are generally NOT the fault of the developers, but the fault of many players over-hyping and/or setting expectations too high.

I soloed him without the use of things like Frost Oil/Deathfrost enchant as a Demo Warlock with Felguard.

At the beginning of the fight start to generate Demonic Fury. I ran some tests on the freezing of the Boss and I know how he can be frozen without the use of things like Frost Oil/Deathfrost enchant. When you have 1000 Demonic Fury, use Metamorphosis and start spamming Touch of Chaos. I noticed that this ability freezes Viscidus, because it deals chaos dmg which is dmg in all seven schools: Physical, FROST, Fire, Holy, Shadow, Nature and Arcane. When the Boss is frozen, use Felguard's Felstorm and summon second Felguard via Grimoire of Service. This should be enough to shatter Viscidus. After shattering him just kill him. Good Luck and Have Fun!

Wands don't work. Trust me, I tried. Not unless they changed it in a hotfix in the last week.

Here's my strat, used twice now. I've got a 1.8 speed dagger with Elemental Force. First I burn him down to 1% health while the Voidlord tanks. Then I swap to the dagger and start to melee him. After the second freezing up warning I summon a Shivarra, because I believe she dual wields and gets more attacks in. Then I go back to stabbing, drink a Haste potion when he freezes, and wait for him to go boom. Worked like a charm so far.

Disclaimer: I have 15% Haste from my gear, this may or may not impact my success.

Yup just throw on elemental force and go nuts. Pets attacking count as melee hits, so use a pet that attacks faster. I'm not familar with locks, but I assume out of the many they have, one must hit faster. Then throw on a weapon that swings faster and that's about it. Since the hotfix it's a complete joke now.

I didn't even have to do anything special when I killed him last week. I started prepping to do some stuff with GoSer for 2x FG and a bunch of other stuff but before I even had a chance to summon the 2nd FG my first FG had already shattered him with regular melee swings.